COMED'S HARD-CHARGING NEW BOSS

As John W. Rowe becomes Commonwealth Edison Co.'s new CEO next month, he'll bring a calculating and unsentimental view of the utility industry and a track record for making tough decisions.

Moving quickly to reshape the embattled Chicago utility, he most likely will shutter plants, sell assets or implement other strong -- but needed -- measures.

"Running nuclear plants is the most difficult business venture I know of," Mr. Rowe said in an interview Friday. "You've got to be hard-boiled about it. If you're going to run them, you must run them to the highest standards or you can't run them at all."

The 52-year-old Wisconsin native is lauded as a creative thinker who harbors no attachment to ComEd's aging fleet of nuclear plants, the legacy of predecessor James J. O'Connor, who will retire next month after 34 years at the utility.

Byzantine worlds

Mr. Rowe began his career at now-defunct Chicago law firm Isham Lincoln & Beale handling the licensing of nuclear power plants for ComEd. And industry experts say he has the political skills that always have been de rigueur for the utility's top brass.

Those who know him say he quotes statesmen from Pericles to Lincoln and is a history buff with a fondness for the Byzantine Empire.

He also is credited for understanding the Byzantine world of utility deregulation, formulating creative solutions for utilities facing the often-terrifying prospect of competition.

"He was one of the first executives to recognize the wave was going to hit, and his company would be better served riding the wave than being crushed underneath it," said John Howe, former chairman of Massachusetts' regulatory commission, now called the Department of Tele-communications and Energy.

Still, Mr. Rowe will find daunting challenges at Unicom, which just fought a bruising deregulation battle in Springfield. Two of ComEd's five nuclear plants are on the federal regulator's watch list of the nation's most troubled plants and a third is being closely monitored.

Also on Mr. Rowe's agenda: finding ways to protect ComEd's turf and develop new businesses as the market opens up to competition.

Mr. Rowe will inherit a company with revenues topping $6 billion and a service territory of 3.4 million customers. In contrast, NEES, which he joined in 1989, had revenues of $2.5 billion last year and serves about 1.3 million customers.

But NEES' size didn't limit Mr. Rowe's daring.

In a prelude to Massachusetts' adoption of a deregulation bill last year, Mr. Rowe agreed to divest 18 NEES fossil-fuel generating plants for $1.6 billion, leaving the utility with transmission and distribution assets, minority stakes in a half-dozen nuclear plants and marketing capability.

In exchange, state regulators sanctioned a guaranteed recovery of the balance of the utility's estimated $4 billion in stranded costs -- uneconomic investments that can't be recouped in a free market.

But just as in Illinois, not everyone in the Bay State agreed that utility shareholders should be made whole at the expense of ratepayers.

"He did a masterful job," said Rob Sargent, legislative director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group. "But he used his skill to preside over the biggest consumer ripoff in the history of the commonwealth."

However, other environmental groups are more complimentary. "In New England, he was a leader in investing in cleaner power alternatives," said Howard Learner, executive director of the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center.

Mr. Rowe faces a more complex picture here.

Unlikely to find a buyer for ComEd's nuclear plants, he's more apt to shutter some of them and then search for replacement generating capacity, Mr. Learner said. "You just can't sell them and be done with it."

Nukes tough to run

Industry experts say Mr. Rowe was one of the first utility executives to acknowledge the limitations of nuclear power, dating back to his 1980s tenure as CEO of Central Maine Power Co. The utility was troubled by its 6% stake in the nuclear plant at Seabrook, N.H. -- a project bedeviled by cost overruns and protesters -- as well as poor relations with regulators.

"Nuclear plants have turned out to be tough -- not just for Unicom," Mr. Rowe said. "You have to run them with the thoroughness of a military operation."

After growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, Mr. Rowe received bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Wisconsin.

Although he made a name for himself in the legal field for handling regulatory work at Isham Lincoln & Beale, he felt his talents didn't fit the traditional specialties of trial work, tax or securities law.

"I was more interested in management and problem-solving," he recalled.

Having successfully handled a high-profile bankruptcy case in the railroad industry, Mr. Rowe, at 35, was tapped by Philadelphia-based railroad giant Consolidated Rail Corp. -- Conrail -- as general counsel.

Four years later, he won the chance to run Central Maine Power, where he earned his stripes as a turnaround man.

Said Illinois Commerce Commission member Karl A. McDermott, who has worked with Mr. Rowe at industry forums: "He has the ability to go in and fix companies that have had problems."